Mr. Sam Waide:

I want to touch on a few points. The need for continued investment in road safety was raised earlier by members of the committee and in my opening statement. I feel compelled to highlight to everyone a figure that some members may be familiar with. We cannot replace a loss of life. I again give my condolences, not only to the family in the Deputy's constituency but to everyone who has lost someone. Investment should continue. It costs the State €3.5 million to €4 million for each fatality. If we turn this on its head, and state we will invest €4 million in all of the interventions or selected interventions, a single agency or one individual would not achieve it. It requires a collective effort.

The road safety strategy includes the safe system approach for safer roads, which is internationally renowned and is being implemented by our fellow EU member countries as well as ourselves in Ireland. The Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, has stated there is a need to continue to invest in safer roads. It is part of the safe system approach for road safety. I can only speak from the perspective of the RSA. The purpose of the organisation is to save lives. The authority has a research team and if the Deputy wants to engage with us, we can provide either assessment or monitoring of behaviours on an existing or new road. We can help to provide evidence-based commentary and support if a request was made in the past and is still outstanding. As I and my colleagues have said, we are delivering road safety interventions that are evidence based. If there is evidence that suggests a particular junction or a stretch of road is unsafe, we would welcome the opportunity to help provide information and work with local councils to try to address these problems.

My colleague wants to come in on one of the Deputy's points.